It might be noted here that Freudian analysts of fairy tales have suggested that kissing toads and frogs is symbolized fellatio. In that regard, Princess Leigh-Cheri was, on a conscious level, innocent, although not so naive as Queen Tilli, who thought fellatio was an obscure Italian opera and was annoyed that she couldn’t find the score.
The king poured maple syrup on his waffle. The syrup puddled the depressions in the waffle the way that desire puddles the folds in the brain.
Jerusalem was where it all went down, man. It was connected to heaven like Spanish Harlem was connected to Puerto Rico.
Human societies have always defined themselves through narration, but nowadays corporations are telling man’s stories for him.
They say a story that begins with a beet will end with the devil; that is a risk we will have to take.
Granny and me alone on Judgment Day and wonder if there is some wider meaning there, some cryptic message from a hidden dimension, from the Other, from the Over Self. Or if it was simply that heaven didn’t want us and hell was afraid we’d take over.
She puckered her bubble gum mouth until its exaggerated sensuality drew attention away from the blood-blue crescents beneath her eyes. “My bags may be packed, but I haven’t left town. No wonder Ricki finds me irresistible. She’s only human.” Leaning.
Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.
When civilized people dance they reconnect with their old animal nature. It reminds them that they aren’t mechanical chess pieces or rooted trees, but free-flowing meat waves of possibility.
Whether you need the solace of normality more than you need your unique power is a personal matter, which only you may decide. But Sissy, don’t let people such as Julian Gitche influence your decision. Julian needs your thumbs, huge and murmuring like the mouths of unexplored rivers – just the way nature made them – even if he isn’t wise enough to understand that he needs them.
IT WAS AUTUMN, the springtime of death. Rain spattered the rotting leaves, and a wild wind wailed. Death was singing in the shower. Death was happy to be alive.
A sausage is an image of rest, peace and tranquility in stark contrast to the destruction and chaos of everyday life.
Turn a mountain upside down, you have a woman. Turn a woman upside down, you have a valley. Turn a valley upside down, you get folk music.
Bones are patient. Bones never tire nor do they run away. When you come upon a man who has been dead many years, his bones will still be lying there, in place, content, patiently waiting, but his flesh will have gotten up and left him. Water is like flesh. Water will not stand still. It is always off to somewhere else; restless, talkative, and curious. Even water in a covered jar will disappear in time. Flesh is water. Stones are like bones. Satisfied. Patient. Dependable.
The accumulation of material things is shallow and vain, but to have a genuine relationship with such things is to have a relationship with life and, by extension, a relationship with the divine.
Outside, the rains had come, the rains that like a blizzard of guppies would pelt the creaky old house until spring. There is no weeping that can compete with the northwest rains.
There was a purity about him, a blaze in his eyes, that bordered on the charismatic. I also had the sense that hanging out with him would be dangerous: not because he might prove mean, violent, dishonest, or crazier than anybody else I knew, but because he seemed both completely uncompromised and completely uncompromising. As Henry Miller said of Rimbaud, he was “like a man who discovered electricity but knew absolutely nothing about insulation.
Death is not a resident of the house. ‘Death’ is merely the name we give to certain rooms of the house, rooms that we, the so-called ‘living,’ fear for the simple reason that we have not passed through them.
You know that I’ve always been proud of the way nature singled me out. It’s the people who have been deformed by society that I feel sorry for. We can live with nature’s experiments, and if they aren’t too vile, turn them to our advantage. But social deformity is sneaky and invisible; it makes people into monsters – or mice.
To practice a religion can be lovely, to believe in one is almost always disastrous.